Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied

[Xess]

I think working out hitting the gym and getting strong helps out. It will make you stronger than most people and you know that if you wanted to you can handle yourself in a fight. So if you tell someone to cut it off, you can back up your words. Once I started lifting weights most shit talking ended completely period. I was already stronger than most people to begin with but was really skinny due to my running.

This is the thing that Eleas was talking about. It's great if you can force your bullies to stop by beating the shit out of them, but that doesn't work for everybody. Some bullies just come back with their friends and beat you as a team, some people can never be strong enough to beat someone up and some people, like myself, had an ingrained sense of being so worthless that they deserve being beaten forced onto them by the bullying. Saying, "Well just work out and get strong so you can fight back" is blaming the victim. Doing so is saying, "You're so pathetic you can't even muster the nerve to stop your torment. What the fuck is wrong with you? Don't you want to stop your pain?" Of course the victim does, but that doesn't mean they can do it. It's exactly the same as if you told someone "Well you chose to wear the clothes that got you beaten up, so it's really your fault."

[Formless]

You can accuse any solution to the problem of bullying that requires input on the victim's part as potentially blaming the victims. If there is something the victim isn't doing that they could do to end the bullying, and you assume that this something is a skill they should already know or a personality trait that they are somehow worthless or inferior for lacking, then the conclusion is inescapable. But the thing is, for some kids it works/ed. Does it work for everyone? Obviously not, but that is beside the point. The problem is that the people who are bringing up such solutions aren't making that assumption. Many of them in this thread were simply giving their own anecdotes from the perspective of the victim.

Think about that for a moment. All a bullied kid wants is to see an end to the bullying. If the kid thinks going to the administration of their school or to their parents will help put a stop to it, they might just do that. If they decide to solve the problem the hard way with their fists as some people in this thread have attested to doing as kids, they might just do that instead. That may be indicative of a difference in the personality or situation each kid was in, but it does not necessarily mean that the kid who went to the adults for help is a spineless coward who will never live up to anything and the one who considered defending themself if they ever got attacked is a primitive hostile ape who is one shitday away from turning into an Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold. Depending on the kid either possibility may be a reality, but its entirely irrelevant to the central problem.

The thing is, kids who have been bullied need to know what options they have and what they can do to help themselves, and likewise the adults around them who run schools and other places where such abuse happens need to think of ways they can help the kids so as to reduce the amount of violence regardless of who started (or ended) any given fight. Is anyone going to step up and come up with alternative solutions? You can't just dismiss a solution one kid may come up with on his own simply because encouraging him or her to solve their own problems can be perceived as blaming the kids who didn't or couldn't come up with it for whatever reason and then wonder why the problem hasn't gone away.

[Xess]

Very true. What I was thinking of was more of the attitude that some people have, which is far worse than merely suggesting methods of help which is what I assume ArmorPierce was doing. From my experience when someone tells you to "Man up", it is them trying to shift responsibility onto someone else, usually the victim in this case. Not all people do this of course, I'm rather biased as all I experienced in school was blaming the victim.

EDIT: Thinking about it what I'm trying to say is that the victim shouldn't have to take responsibility for stopping their pain. They have done nothing wrong, if they're being abused its a failure of the people responsible and they should be the ones who bear the onus of stopping the bullying. It doesn't always work that way of course. It angers me when a blameless person has the take responsibility for the failure of others.

[Formless]

EDIT: Thinking about it what I'm trying to say is that the victim shouldn't have to take responsibility for stopping their pain. They have done nothing wrong, if they're being abused its a failure of the people responsible and they should be the ones who bear the onus of stopping the bullying. It doesn't always work that way of course. It angers me when a blameless person has the take responsibility for the failure of others.

We are in agreement here, honestly. What I find annoying is that no one seems to be interested in saying what the people who bear responsibility should be doing. Its like telling a Cop how not to his job when he doesn't have access to proper law enforcement tools, and wondering why people are deciding to take the law into their own hands to compensate.

[Simon_Jester]

I think working out hitting the gym and getting strong helps out. It will make you stronger than most people and you know that if you wanted to you can handle yourself in a fight. So if you tell someone to cut it off, you can back up your words. Once I started lifting weights most shit talking ended completely period. I was already stronger than most people to begin with but was really skinny due to my running.

The problem is that whether this will work depends entirely on what kind of bullies you're dealing with. If you're a guy and if you're dealing with bullies who operate alone and go for physical torment over mental, then it's going to help. If you don't (and that includes more than half the people getting bullied)... not so much. It's a good strategy under the right circumstances, but only under those circumstances.

EDIT: Thinking about it what I'm trying to say is that the victim shouldn't have to take responsibility for stopping their pain. They have done nothing wrong, if they're being abused its a failure of the people responsible and they should be the ones who bear the onus of stopping the bullying. It doesn't always work that way of course. It angers me when a blameless person has the take responsibility for the failure of others.

Shouldn't have to, yes. Can do it, sometimes. It's not an option to be completely ignored, any more than trying to teach the awkward kids social skills they're lacking is.

We are in agreement here, honestly. What I find annoying is that no one seems to be interested in saying what the people who bear responsibility should be doing. Its like telling a Cop how not to his job when he doesn't have access to proper law enforcement tools, and wondering why people are deciding to take the law into their own hands to compensate.

Agreed. The problem is that most of it is fairly obvious: bullies are personally responsible for bullying and shouldn't do it, but everyone who isn't a complete jackass agrees on that. Authorities should be monitoring the schools and cracking down on bullies, but again, most people agree on that in principle. If they're falling down on the job, it's for reasons that any fool can see- they might be good or bad, but they're still obvious.

Since the thread started on "why kids get bullied," it's natural to analyze that and look for countermoves from the kids' point of view.

[ArmorPierce]

]The problem is that whether this will work depends entirely on what kind of bullies you're dealing with. If you're a guy and if you're dealing with bullies who operate alone and go for physical torment over mental, then it's going to help. If you don't (and that includes more than half the people getting bullied)... not so much. It's a good strategy under the right circumstances, but only under those circumstances

I was talking more alongst the line of mental over physical since that was what I have encountered at school. It doesn't stop it completely but the fact that you can assert yourself and be able to back up your words reduces it. THe fact that you are physically bigger reduces it straight up and I am talking from experience

[Xess]

Shouldn't have to, yes. Can do it, sometimes. It's not an option to be completely ignored, any more than trying to teach the awkward kids social skills they're lacking is.

I don't disagree, I was merely frustrated. This is a very sore topic for me.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

My own long-term attempt at summoning libertarian grit and "stomping" the other guys "hard" came to an end when I realized that gee, the onset of puberty would really have fucking helped me now. The other guys had speed, strength, friends, and overwhelming support on their side. So between the fact that even today I my muscles lock down whenever fighting starts, the memories of getting the shit beat out of me in front of a laughing crowd of people, and the therapy sessions dealing among other things with the fact that deep down I know I deserved that for "not bein' man enough"... I'd say the efficacy of this most manly of virtues may be overstated.

A funny thing, is it not? We tell kids over and over again not to get into fights, then tell them to stand up for themselves when picked on. There are few things more demoralizing than trying to fight back, only for the school to come down on you like a ton of bricks.

[defanatic]

The reason why bullying occurs is because the strong kids see a victim in a weak kid. Bullies were never taught how to behave by their parents and/or were made to feel like shit by them, so they single out whoever makes an easy target and go to work on him so they can feel superior at least for a few hours in a day.

Actually, a 2000 study showed that bullies tended to have very high self-esteems, and people who only bullied and were never bullied tended to be the least anxious when they went into highschool.

I can cite more of the actual study when I head into university later this week, I don't feel like paying for psych studies today.

[Elfdart]

Bullies pick easy targets. Some targets are easy because they're weak... some are easy because they have no friends. People who have no friends because of they're doing social interactions wrong are at a disadvantage- they're some of the softest targets of all unless they're a gorilla, physically speaking.

And in no reasonable sense does that mean it's their fault, or that they can make it all go away by doing something right socially. But it's foolhardy to ignore a way to make yourself less of a target because it's "not your fault" that you're being attacked in the first place.

In my experience, I found that the only way to stop being a target of a bully was to stomp on him —hard.

I was one of the gorillas, but there will always be one or more dickheads who don't know when to stop. I've always had huge feet, which I had to introduce to the scrotums of a couple of would-be bullies in junior high school. I hate to say it, but it's true: bullies don't stop until they are forced to, either by adults, or a shot in the nuts or a punch in the face. I still got in trouble at school and at home for doing it, though.

[Elfdart]

A funny thing, is it not? We tell kids over and over again not to get into fights, then tell them to stand up for themselves when picked on. There are few things more demoralizing than trying to fight back, only for the school to come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Treat it as a lesson in life: Sometimes you have to make a tough decision. Physical abuse is worse than getting in trouble at school. If the bullying is that bad and you're forced to defend yourself, do so. My parents were furious with me for getting suspended after two fights in the same week, but when my friends and classmates stuck up for me they relented.

[Edi]

My parents didn't particularly enjoy it when I got in trouble for fighting, but my father always told me that I didn't have to put up with abuse. When teachers confronted me with the inevitable "But fighting is always wrong" they didn't really have an answer when I told them I'm not going to just stand there and take a beating and that my father always said I'm allowed to defend myself.

Given how I was constantly bullied starting from kindergarten through junior high, my parents didn't much care for excuses made on behalf of bullies. My mother was a teacher for well over 30 years, so she got to see that side too and knew quite well how the bullies work and she didn't put up with it at her school (fortunately not the one I went to). The teachers in my schools also did a good job of reining in bullies in general, though obviously they could not be there all the time. In a school of some 300-400 pupils if someone is the target of 50+ people, there's no way all bullying can be stopped. That happened to me in 7th grade, but once I got my nose cartilage broken and the bully who did it was bleeding all over the schoolyard and the principal's office from multiple lacerations and smashed lips, they *really* cracked down and it largely stopped after that.

If you have a bigger school, the potential for things going unnoticed goes up and if the staff doesn't give a shit, it's going to be bad.